IT WAS BRIAN PETERSON who placed his newborn son in a plastic bag and then heaved
him into a Dumpster 12 feet away. There was an audible crack as the body, perhaps
the baby's head, hit the metal trash bin. Peterson

Brian Peterson

then turned on his heel on that
freezing November morning in 1996 and returned to the hotel room where Amy
Grossberg was waiting. It was she who had ordered Peterson to "get rid of it" after
giving birth to a curly-haired baby boy.

It might have worked, this first foray into infanticide for the doting couple, had it not
been for their ignorance of the basics of childbirth. Neither of them knew enough to
deliver the afterbirth -- the part you really are supposed to "get rid of" -- and so when
Amy went back to college, she began to hemorrhage and was rushed to a hospital.
That's when the question was asked: "Where's the baby?"

Last week, as Grossberg and Peterson were sentenced, we delved deeper into the
moral junkyard that characterized these two products of an affluent New Jersey
suburb. Grossberg had written to her boyfriend of her regret that the pregnancy had
interfered with their sex life. "I wish I could have my nice body back," she whined. "As
soon as everything gets better, I'll be my sweet, normal self. We'll be able to uh-uuh
lots. I really miss it." About the pregnancy, she wrote, "All I want is for it to go away."
(She declined an abortion for fear that her mother would discover it.)

These youngsters are not monsters. They are quite normal. Grossberg was probably
trained at school to have lots of self-esteem. She was also instructed -- not just at
school but by the Supreme Court, a pro-choice president and most of elite opinion --
that abortion is a morally acceptable solution to an unwanted pregnancy. In Delaware,
she could have reported for a partial-birth abortion at almost any time up until the birth.
In fact, just days before Peterson and Grossberg were sentenced, an Arizona
abortionist started to perform that procedure on a fetus he had been told was 23 or 24
weeks old. Only after the procedure began did he realize that the baby was actually a
6 pound, 2 ounce baby girl at full term. He delivered the child alive -- but with a
fractured skull and two large lacerations on her face -- the results of the aborted
abortion.

So there is really no surprise that Amy Grossberg -- her "sweet, normal self" -- can
have believed that an unwanted baby just seconds after birth is just as disposable as
an unwanted fetus at midterm. Melissa Drexler, who gave birth in a toilet at her prom,
the mother who left her newborn in a bathroom at Disneyworld, and the others who
have left babies to die in the cold or drown in toilets in cities around the nation are
acting on the same insight -- there is no intrinsic value or sacredness to life. What gives
life value is the desire of the mother.

What else are these young women to conclude? We permit a pregnant woman to sue if
her fetus is harmed by environmental or other hazards -- because she wants the baby.
If not, she can kill it.

The judge revealed his own peculiar moral standards by ruling that 24 months for
Peterson and 30 months for Grossberg was sufficient punishment for treating a
newborn infant like an empty shoe box. He also sentenced the couple to perform 300
hours of community service -- including working in clinics for pregnant teenagers and
"counseling teenagers on parenthood."

That's what we need -- child killers lecturing on what it means to be a parent!

Even the prosecutors seem to have been confused about the gravity of the case.
Praising Peterson for his cooperation with authorities, one prosecutor said, "He was
chivalrous, but stupid." So the code of chivalry now includes killing the defenseless --
even one's own baby?

Yes, feelings seem to have trumped absolute values quite thoroughly. The feelings of
the mother, not the child made in the image and likeness of God, determine the baby's
value. In Janesville, Wis., a 37-year-old man was sentenced to 12 years in prison -- for
killing cats.

They were wanted
cats.

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